


A prayer for which no words exist

by Honeysuckle_knight



Series: Bouquet modern au [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama & Romance, First Meetings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 10:10:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17599292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honeysuckle_knight/pseuds/Honeysuckle_knight
Summary: We all have our roles to play, and for our heroes of this tale, they seem certain. Heroic poet, harried scientist, monstrous lizard. But contact with the other rarely leaves us the same way it found us.---Bouquet university au, potential smut in later chapters





	1. Let me name the stars for you

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! This fic has been a bit of a project of mine for a while now, and I'm posting it to force myself to finish it. Fic and all chapter titles are from various Richard Siken poems (is it obvious I like his poetry yet?), and once again I thank my very own Arum and Rilla for the encouragement. Arum, if you're reading this, I'm working on getting more of this fic to you, so we need to work out further payment. Winky face.

“You said  _ Tell me about your books, your visions made _

_ of flesh and light  _ and I said  _ This is the Moon. This is _

_ the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you _

_ there.” _

 

The Vellum Cafe, nestled in the foyer of the Citadel University’s not unimpressive library, was home to all sorts of exhausted and stressed students. Damien, between perusing the poetry section and acting as security on campus, spent most of his evenings here, lending a shoulder to those who needed to cry, a poem for those who needed something stronger, and a prayer for something stronger than that. And coffee, of course. Copious amounts of coffee. On this particular evening, only one student was in the cafe, having staggered her way in, curled up as best she could on the cheap chairs, and tugged her coat over her knees. This student in particular was something of a regular here, albeit not a particularly coherent one. Damien grabbed a coffee cup from the counter, the pot of coffee, and a handful of sugar sachets, and made his way over to the table.

“Long black, two sugars?”

 

The student- Amaryllis, he believed her name was- blinked up at him, bleary and struggling to form a memory that simply wasn’t there, not unlike trying to watch a toddler smash a square peg through a triangular hole. Eventually, either the peg or hole must’ve broken.

“You! You’re my knight! You bring me coffee!”

“It is my job, yes.”

 

Damien couldn’t help but chuckle as he poured her coffee. Amaryllis watched with eyes wide, as if Saint Damien himself had descended from the heavens and was working a miracle in front of her.

“Nobody believes me when I tell them a knight brings me coffee. But look at you! All buff and heroic and knightly- and you  _ do  _ wear armour!”

 

Amaryllis’ gave a jabbing gesture towards the grey apron Damien was wearing, poking her finger into the stiff material.

“Well, you can certainly set everyone straight when you see them next,” Damien carefully slid the coffee cup within reach of Amaryllis, who immediately downed it in one swig as if it contained the elixir of immortality. In his experience dealing with Amaryllis in this state previously, within a few seconds, the bleary and delirious student would have bounced back to what he could only assume was her regular self, rambling about plants or medicine or some combination of the two. But on this occasion, Amaryllis placed the cup down, placed her head on the table, and crashed. That was new.

 

Would it be weirder to move her somewhere or leave her asleep where she was? It was evident that Amaryllis needed sleep, nobody could sleep in these chair unless their organs were about to fail, but would it look more suspicious carrying an unconscious woman somewhere or leaving an unconscious woman with a drink next to her? Saints- Damien began gnawing on the loose skin on his thumb. Would she panic if she woke up in an unfamiliar environment? Or would she freak out at having passed out anyway?

 

Damien retrieved his necklace from under his shirt, a small gold fishing spear given to him by Angelo for their rivalversary, and ran his thumb over the length of it, on a spot already polished smooth by the movement. Tranquility, tranquility, what would Saint Damien do, tranquility, tranquility. He felt his breathing even out, and glanced around the room with a new awareness.

 

It didn’t seem right leaving her to sleep there, and she’d undoubtedly be uncomfortable when she awoke. There was nobody else in the cafe who needed his help, and she was probably safer in one of the private study rooms than out here in the open. Damien pulled out his notebook, tore out a page, and wrote “out to lunch” in large writing, leaving it on the main service counter. He removed his apron, threw it over the counter, gathered Amaryllis’ bag onto his shoulder, and as gently as he could, lifted her into a bridal style carry. She didn’t stir, and he began the walk to the other side of the library, quietly thankful that Angelo had roped him into weightlifting when he did.

\----

Amaryllis may have been running on only a few hours of sleep that week, but even so, she was fairly certain this wasn’t where she’d fallen asleep. For one, she could’ve never fallen asleep if that horrifying ‘hang in there’ kitten poster was staring at her as it was now. She also didn’t remember the chair she was in being so soft, or having a blanket on her, or-

 

Now that she thought of it, she did remember the knight being there.

He was scribbling in a pocket-sized notebook, looking just at the verge of dishevelled where he was still attractive, his short dark brown hair just ruffled enough that Rilla was filled with the urge to ruffle it some more. The fluorescent yellow light streaming in from the library outside the room had turned parts of his skin to gold, the same colour as the fishing spear necklace peeking out from his shirt, and any part of him that wasn’t in direct light was bronze, smooth but not entirely unflawed. Statuesque didn’t begin to cover it, not properly.

 

“Are you an angel?”

Damien jolted at the sudden sound of Amaryllis talking, and stuffed his notebook back into his pocket. Ignoring the question as a side-effect of sleep-deprived-delirium, he dragged his chair closer to the couch where he’d laid Rilla.

“Where’s your dorm?”

 

With a groan, Rilla answered “Ferdinand building, I think,” she covered her eyes with one hand, stained in a few places with blue ink, “but I need to keep studying, Mr Angel Knight man.”

Damien shook his head, and firmly said “You can’t remember my name and you’ve been coming here for three months now. Nothing you’re studying is going to stick. Come! Let’s get you back to your dorm.”

 

Damien offered a hand, the delicate hand of a writer, but Rilla found a certain strength to it as she used it to lift herself up off the couch and onto her feet. The two of them tried not to notice as their hands almost instinctively lingered in the hold for more than strictly necessary.

 

Damien’s coat, which had acted as a blanket up until only a few moments prior, was draped over Amaryllis’ shoulders, her studying supplies placed firmly in hand, the two of them set off towards her dorm.

 

\---

Ferdinand building was mercifully not too far away, just across a bridge and a quad, and the journey was much shorter than it could’ve been, considering Amaryllis was able to walk herself there. The first half was filled with protests about upcoming tests and how she was ‘honestly fine,’ and ‘just needed to get back to it’, but by the halfway point, Amaryllis had clearly accepted the mortal need for sleep- either that, or her brief nap had worn off. The latter was more likely, as Amaryllis all but collapsed in Damien’s arms mere moments before they arrived at her dorm room door. Damien looked around, attempting not to look suspicious, and fished Rilla’s keys out of her hand. The door swung open, and with no small amount of effort, Damien all but dragged her through the threshold. No lights on in the dorm- if she had a roommate, they were probably fast asleep by now. Making as little noise as was possible for someone carrying an unconscious person through a cluttered dorm in the dark, Damien identified the door that lead to Rilla’s room- the one helpfully labelled ‘Amaryllis’- and continued on his crusade to bring this woman to bed. 

 

Her room was only slightly cluttered, most of the clutter consisting of plants and textbooks opened on specific pages, which Damien was careful not to disturb. The walls, though it was difficult to see in the dim light provided by the moon and the street lights outside, were covered in butcher’s paper, pinned haphazardly with diagrams and scribblings- too dark to make out, and besides, it seemed altogether too vulnerable. Damien barely knew this woman, he didn’t think it proper to be going through her belongings. Though he lacked the strength to carry her bridal-style once again, through some miracle (thank you again, Saint Damien) he managed to hoist her into bed, quickly but gently covering her with blankets. Almost subconsciously, he reached out to brush one of Rilla’s long curls out of her face. Quick as a venus flytrap, his hand was caught in Rilla’s, her eyes bleary but open.

 

“Don’t go.”

Damien stammered and gently tried to tug his hand away. 

“Amaryllis, I don’t think it would be proper of me to-”

“I don’t care. I don’t want you to go.”

“You’re clearly sleep deprived and delirious, I can’t in good conscience-”

“‘m not, I don’t want to do anything, I just don’t want you to leave. The bed’s big enough for the two of us.”

 

Damien hesitated, hesitated again, but Rilla’s grip was surprisingly firm and before he really had time to formulate an argument (this,  _ this _ is why you got kicked off the debate team, he thought to himself), she had dragged him into the bed and was holding him in a grip that would’ve made Angelo, Mr Captain of the wrestling team himself, weep with joy.

 

“You’re not going anywhere, Mr Knight.”

 

Damien sighed, and relented. He had to admit, it was a nice feeling, being held like this. Rilla smelled of coffee and flowers and highlighter pens, her hair was soft and her breathing was even and rhythmic, almost musical at this proximity. When it was evident he was no longer attempting to escape, Rilla changed her grip, tangling her fingers in his hair, pressing her other hand into the small of his back. Damien, attempting to follow her lead without overstepping boundaries, pressed his forehead against hers, and cupped the hand on his head with his own hand. Rilla was beautiful, of course, of course, and Damien would’ve been lying if he said he hadn’t noticed it, just as he noticed her drive and intelligence, the eloquence with which she spoke, even when sleep deprived and virtually incoherent. He just never considered their regular meetings an appropriate time to approach her. They didn’t have any classes together, they weren’t on the same side of the university, and he didn’t want to find her on social media, considering she couldn’t even remember his name when they spoke. This, however, was certainly an opportunity to get to know her better. Tomorrow morning, that was, when she awoke.

 

Confident that Rilla was now asleep enough to not notice his absence, Damien ever so carefully extracted himself from her grasp. Replacing himself with a pillow, and once again taking pains to avoid the maelstrom of study materials and potted plants around him, he slipped from her room, making it as far as the couch in the common area before his own long night caught up with him, not quite crashing as hard as Rilla did, but embracing sleep nonetheless.

 

\---

Amaryllis, on this particular morning, began formulating a theory. Consciousness, she supposed, was not so much a binary state as it was a fluid, sliding continuum. This theory was fuelled mostly by the fact that she seemed awake, felt awake, and yet her thoughts were muggy and sluggish. Perhaps, just perhaps, the late nights were actually having an impact.

 

“Rilla!”

 

So that’s what she was meant to be doing! Listening! Rilla rubbed her eyes again, attempting to focus on her roommate, standing in the door.

“Sorry- what was that?”

Alice, her roommate, gave her a sharp look of ‘are you kidding me’ before repeating herself.

“Your knight is on the couch.”

“My knight?”   
“Yeah, you know- buff, perfect skin, cute butt, brings you coffee? We have a rule about bringing home ‘guests’, Rilla, even if they’re fictional. Or, y’know, everyone thought they were fictional.”

“Sorry- my knight  _ is  _ real?”

“How is this news to you?!”

 

Alice waved her hands, in a motion that suggested she was searching for some kind of logic, but came up empty. She shook her head. 

 

“I’ve got an 8:30 statistics lecture, it finishes at 10:30, I want him out of here by the time I get back, got it? You’ve been a great roommate up until now, do  _ not  _ blow it by bringing home boys, even just to prove me wrong.”

 

Alice, as a rule, hated being proven wrong. She shook her keys as if to emphasise her statement, gave Rilla one last firm look, before disappearing back the way she came. Down the hall, she heard a muffled ‘See you later Mr Knight in shining armour’ and what sounded like a sleepy grunt in response, before the dorm door slammed shut. Rilla, still in her study clothes from the previous night, gathered her composure enough to drag herself out of bed and force herself down the hallway. Just like Alice said, on the couch laid her knight, rubbing his dark brown eyes and wincing at the light.

“That's the second person who's said I'm fictional in the past twenty four hours.”

  
“Well, to be fair, I have only spoken to you when I was extremely tired and kind of delirious, so my roomate wasn't exactly willing to believe you exist.”

 

The knight shrugged.

 

“You mentioned that last night as well, and many times prior to that.”

 

“I’m sorry- how long have we been speaking for?”

 

He did some quick maths on his fingers.

“Oh, a few months now?”

“Shit-”

Rilla rubbed her eyes again, ensuring one last time that yes, this was a real situation she’d gotten herself into.

“-I’m so sorry, I can’t even remember your name-”

“Damien. Damien Knight.”

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You weren’t wrong when you called me a knight! Just, wrong kind of knight, I’m afraid.”

Rilla extended a hand to him, uncertain of what gesture would be most appropriate in the current situation.

“Amaryllis Ellis.”

“Pleasure to finally make the acquaintance of your coherent self,”

He took the hand and shook it gingerly, before letting out a partially-stifled yawn. Rilla, knowing her schedule to be clear, silenced the beginnings of butterflies building in her stomach.

“Do you want me to walk you back to your dorm?”

A smile crossed Damien’s face, bright and genuine, and Saints what Rilla wouldn’t have given to make it stay a while longer.

“I would be delighted, Ms. Amaryllis.”

In a few efficient, but still sleepy, movements, Damien was upright and offering an elbow for Amaryllis to hold onto, which she did, eagerly. Rilla grabbed her set of keys from near the door, and the pair of them ventured out into the morning light.

\---

“About last night-”

“How much do you remember?”   
“I remember wrestling you into bed? Did that actually happen?”

“It did.”

“Oh saints-”


	2. Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I came to your party.

“I don’t know why you couldn’t have found someone else to drive you-”

“Because there is nobody else I would rather have to accompany me! You and I, rivals, partying and finally getting you out of that library of yours!”

“I do leave the library-”

“To go back to your dorm room, or to go to classes, or to go to a cafe to read poetry and sigh forlornly!”

“Is there really anything wrong with that?”

“Your only friends outside of me are dead poets!”

“I like dead poets!”

Damien had already had this conversation with Angelo roughly 50 times. Every time in high school Angelo had dragged him to a party, or to a bar once they got out, or really any of their escapades had been prefaced with an ‘argument’ about how Damien needed to get out more. ‘Argument’ being not necessarily the right word- it was more of a phatic utterance, really. An exchange that had no meaning or value, but served a purpose. Damien got to protest and act the part of the cloistered scholar, Angelo got to act the part of the chipper devil’s advocate, concerned for his friend’s social life, and the pair of them ended up going out and doing whatever it was Angelo wanted. The two of them knew each other well enough to tell when their posturing and bickering was genuine- it was a game more than anything, a dance between rivals. Before their dance could continue, however, the pair arrived at the share house, and Damien recognized the point of no return. Angelo tilted his head slightly to the side, not unlike a golden retriever, his long dark hair mirroring his movement. The final step was a final check-in, to ensure no last-minute doubts or anxieties. A sacred ritual, stemming back to the first birthday party Angelo dragged him to in grade 9. Damien adjusted the over-sized leather jacket Angelo had insisted he wear, checked his hair in the rear-view mirror (it was sitting exactly the same as it always did, the short length ensured that), and gave Angelo a nod.

 

“Into the valley of death, my dear rival.”

\---

Lights. Music. People pressed up against him. Damien loved the work of Messere Alighieri as much as any Literature student did, but he got the details of the circles of hell vastly wrong. The final circle of hell was a university party.

 

The atmosphere was suffocating- and though Angelo looked supremely comfortable in the centre of attention, engaging someone in a one-armed push-up contest and all manner of other things which Damien could only assume were normal for people who were not him to do, Damien was feeling increasingly like an alien in an unconvincing human disguise. The room seemed to swim and rotate around him, and he found himself scrutinizing his every movement more and more. Was he holding his hands too oddly? His arms? Should he be hunching over this much? Every eye on him felt cutting and intrusive, as if peeling his skin back would be kinder and less painful. He  _ hated _ parties- and he hated feeling like a specimen. He wouldn’t drag Angelo out just yet, they’d barely arrived and Angelo was seeming to be having a fun time, he just needed to get out of there for a while. He spotted a sliding door to the backyard, and before his anxious brain could tie himself up in knots, his ever-faithful legs carried him to safety outside.

 

\---

 

When his thoughts finally deigned to drift back into his head, Damien noticed that he was not the only one out here.

 

The backyard was mostly empty; patchy grass, a glass-topped table with a few chairs scattered around it, some beer cans that had made their way outside. And sitting at the table, wearing an expression that could only be explained as “trying to act very interested in what was happening on his phone, but failing at it”, was a handsome- well, lizard, wearing a shirt that appeared to be covered in prints of tiny geckos. Normally Damien would’ve kept his distance, appreciative of someone else seeking refuge from the slings and arrows of social interaction and still wary of the idea of socialising with monsters, but.

 

His eyes.

 

So intelligent, ringed with an emotion that Damien could feel but not verbalise- to call it sadness would cheapen it, to call it melancholy would undermine its depths. Damien hadn’t even really noticed that they’d made eye contact, until the lizard man cleared his throat, the emotion in his eyes replaced with sharp anger.

 

“It’s impolite to stare. Can I help you?”

 

“Ah-” Remembering that he was not in fact an invisible observer, Damien grew very strongly aware of his body again, and pushed the sleeves of his oversized leather jacket back up his arms. “-Sorry, do you mind if I sit?”

 

The lizard grunted, stowed his phone, and moved to leave.

“Be my guest.”

“No-” Damien reached out a hand, but prevented himself at the last second from grabbing the stranger’s arm. One of the four, anyway.

“Please, I’d like to talk to you.”

The lizard appraised him for a moment. His eyes cold and scrutinising, impartial. After a breath, the lizard replied.

“The lone pair of wallflowers at the party. I suppose it’s natural that we found each other,”

The lizard gestured to a spare seat next to him.

“I was dragged here by some colleagues who insisted I get out of the greenhouse. I expect your reason for being here is similar?”

“Down to the letter, except my best friend dragged me here, and he was trying to get me away from my poetry.”

The lizard raised a ridged eyebrow and tapped his claws on the tabletop. Not annoyance, not that Damien could see, moreso intrigue. 

“I wouldn’t have picked you for a poet. Art student, perhaps, but I always imagined poets were a dying breed of sensitive aesthetes, moaning over the perils of love in turtlenecks and berets.”

Damien felt the blow land, and felt what may just have been a shiver of excitement. It wasn’t malicious- too flowery and the blow was too light to have any venom to it. Damien recognized what this was from the car ride- this was  _ dancing _ .

“It’s certainly a fair assumption to make, just as I had assumed that only old ladies did gardening.”

The lizard scoffed- the blow hadn’t landed straight, and Damien knew it, but the lizard humoured it anyway.

“I am not a gardener, I am a scientist, tktktkt. Though I imagine any practice that involves anything less than wailing and throwing words at a page would be witchcraft to you artistic types.”

“And I imagine that any practice with a level of subjectivity would be witchcraft to you- so much so that you cannot see the underlying structure of it all.”

“Underlying structure?” The lizard was really intrigued now, leaning in and grinning- he hadn’t had such a good dance partner in- well. Ever, really. “Do tell me what trellis your flowery words grow on, Honeysuckle.”

 

Damien felt a flush come across his face, a stark contrast to the cool night air. He tried to justify the beating of his heart as the thumping of the music from inside.

“Well, I suppose it’s all mathematics, in the end,” Damien leaned in, mirroring the lizard’s movements, “Five seven five for haikus, strict mathematical syllabillic structure for limericks, and sonnets? You must keep the syllables in mind as well as the overall structure of the poem. Not all of us billow into free-form prose, you know.”

 

The lizard nodded, acknowledging the blow, before continuing- it seemed this man’s mind had no limitations, always whirring like the machinery of some unknowable device. 

 

“Touche, tktktktkt. But the presence of numbers does not a mathematical structure make. Any idiot, can make a haiku you see- if they know the form. Five, seven, five. The presence of a structure does not make something worthy of time and attention. After all, astrology ostensibly has a structure, does it not?”

 

Damien could not fight against the growing smile on his face if he tried- but as he was about to make his scathing rebuttal, the lizard reached across the table and grabbed his jacket by the lapels. He slid it up back onto his shoulders, from where it had nearly fallen off, and held it there for a moment. It was unexpected, and even the lizard looked as if he had not expected the action. If their argument was a dance, this was the final step; both of them caught vulnerable, neither one moving to capitalise on the vulnerability.

 

The lizard tilted his head ever so slightly.

 

“You have very delicate features, the moonlight is perfect for them. You look like you’d melt in the sunlight, honeysuckle.”

Grasping for words for once in his life, Damien gently brought his hands up to touch the lizard’s. 

“Are your eyes always that violet, or is it the same moonlight that turned them that hue? The moon does do strange things to the eyes of lovers, both the seen and the seeing.”

The two of them remained locked like that for some time. Neither wanted to puncture the silence they had woven, like a cat’s cradle, between them. The music melted away, the setting melted away, until all that was left was the two of them and the infinite yawning void of light and darkness above them. Specks of light and heat and creation above them, just as this too was a moment of heat and light and creation between them. And then, as soon as it had started, the lizard released his grip. Damien let his hands fall, and the moment shattered.

 

Damien, seemingly unable to make eye contact after that scene of intense intimacy, held out a hand, as if the two of them were simply acquaintances and hadn’t just connected in a way that neither really ever had- with one notable exception, for Damien.

“My name is Damien Knight.”

“Arum Titansbloom.”

Damien, desperate to switch topics, cleared his throat.

 

“I have a lady friend who works in the greenhouse for some of her classes- Amaryllis Ellis? She’s never mentioned you before, have you two met?”

Arum scratched the back of his scaly neck and shrugged. 

“I don’t know any Amaryllis- but the greenhouse at Spiral U is rather sizeable-”

 

If Damien had been drinking, he would’ve done a spit take immediately. This whole time, he’d been consorting with the enemy, and he hadn’t even known. Flashes of cautionary tales filled his head- tales of experiments, strange science, lax ethics and a campus full of monsters. Ultimately, he thought, as the grain of prejudice hardened into a pearl of something darker, this man was a monster. A legitimate monster. He was foolish to have thought otherwise, even for a moment. There were no monsters at Citadel University- they were all too wicked and twisted to attend- really, Damien should’ve known, should never had spoken to him in the first place. Damien took his phone out of his pocket as if he were answering a call, and mumbled out something resembling ‘I have to go’.

 

Angelo was easy to find, having claimed a place at the coveted beer pong table, but soon Damien had him by the collar, yelling “Angelo Palladino we are leaving  _ right now- _ ” above the music, as he dragged him out the front door to his car.

 

Angelo was his usual self for the whole trip home. He babbled about new friends and pretty women and how he only took his shirt off one time this party, and Damien’s knuckles were white on the wheel as a sinking feeling began to burrow itself into his stomach, a mix of shame and something else- something he couldn’t put his finger on. 

 

Thank the saints he’d never have to see that lizard again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chaper 2! Give it up for chapter 2! This is the end of my backlog for this fic, so I've no idea when the next chapter will be up. Hopefully soon! Hopefully by the end of next week! We shall see!


End file.
